Danbury's new magnet has built-in fans

Eileen FitzGerald

Updated 5:45 pm, Saturday, March 2, 2013

DANBURY -- Parents of students at the interdistrict elementary school for international studies in Danbury hope their children get an automatic seat when the city's new middle school program with the same theme opens in the fall of 2014.

"There are about 40 Danbury students in fifth grade who will be going to the middle school," Keefe said. "Some will want to try to go to the STEM (science ) academy and some will go to private school, so it would make 30 or less who would want to continue with the international studies program. From what I can tell from the PTO meetings, the parents hope the district will allow their children to continue on to the middle school program."

Each magnet program will have 300 middle school students split among the three grades -- six, seven and eight -- for a total of 600. The school is being renovated starting this summer.

The programs were created to reduce overcrowding at the city's two middle schools.

Keefe said the first group of students who graduated from the elementary magnet are sophomores at Danbury High School, and doing well.

Since parents always wanted the program to continue through the middle school, she thought it would be a great pilot to keep these kids in a magnet middle school if they want and see how they do going forward in the system.

Keefe has a fourth-grader going into fifth grade next year who would be ready for either magnet program, but she said she's unsure which one she will want, since she likes both themes.